The boom days of the internet are back, but this time
it's not the content, but the means of finding it
that is causing the excitement.

Search
has become a billion-dollar business, as well as the
buzz word defining the return of the internet economy.
Telstra's Sensis this week became the latest to offer
web search with a Google-like service that also looks
up telephone numbers.

But
this search battle is much bigger than just the web
and phone numbers. Google, which plans a float later
this year that is expected to place the company's
value at $US20 billion ($27.7 billion), plans to take
on Microsoft for ownership of the personal computer
and perhaps even the digital lounge room.

Google
leads as the most popular search engine, as well with
innovative new search techniques such a personalised
and localised search.

Its
web-based email service, Gmail, will soon let general
users store thousands of emails (up to one gigabyte)
and find information within them.

"Google
is becoming the operating system of the web, offering
a [user interface] on top of the websites," said
Jakob Nielsen, a web expert and principal of the Nielsen
Norman consulting group.

But
Google now wants to displace Microsoft on the computer
desktop. Google's search toolbar, a plug-in to Microsoft's
web browser, was the first nibble. Next came the Deskbar,
which provides search from within Windows.

The
latest, Browse By Name, released yesterday as part
of an upgrade to its search toolbar, allows users
to use real names instead of clunky web addresses.
Enter "BBC News" and news.bbc.co.uk pops
up in your browser; if there is no direct match, it
performs a search for the words entered.

Google
and Microsoft are working on unified engines that
search the web and the computer, the centrepiece to
the digital lounge room of the future. Not surprisingly,
however, others want a slice of the action.

The
latest search tool, Blinkx, has beat Google and Microsoft
to market. Its dowloadable search tool not only searches
the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails,
attachments and the files on your computer. It can
also search digital TV on the internet.

The
Blinkx website reportedly recorded 6 million links
a day from word-of-mouth publicity before its official
launch this week.

Blinkx
uses cutting-edge search technology, deploying artificial
intelligence, to rate stories. Blinkx's co-founder,
Kathy Rittweger, told The Guardian: "What it
is trying to say is that all words are not equal in
a sentence ... Quite critically, if you are looking
at a document and trying to figure out what it means,
Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts
out what are the key ideas."

And
the battle for search on the web is far from complete.
While Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo battle it out,
a flurry of innovative upstarts are now joining in.

Charlene
Li, principal analyst at the independent technology
company Forrester Research, said: "[Although]
it continues to be the most innovative search company
out there, Google can't be everything to everyone."

Other
companies have launched new-look engines with the
promise of Google-like performance, including Teoma
(from AskJeeves) and Wisenut (from LookSmart).

And
different approaches to web searching are emerging.
Mooter, an Australian company, uses artificial intelligence
like Blinkx to "dynamically personalise your
searching experience". Vivisimos's "Clustering
Engine", for instance, sorts search results into
categories, rather than one big list.